The Endeavour-28 delineation well has been cased and suspended as a future producer and rig PDI-735 has now started drilling Endeavour-38, which spudded on Christmas Day.

The Endeavour field has been “very significantly extended” by step-out wells and development drilling will continue until at least March 2007, Drillsearch chairman John Armstrong told the company’s AGM early this month.

But the Mugginanullah near-field exploration well has been plugged and abandoned after a drillstem test failed to recover oil from the Murta reservoir. Rig PDI-724 has now moved to the Currawinya-1 location; this near-field exploration well was spudded on Boxing Day.

The Tintaburra program is part of Santos’ Cooper Oil Project.

The Tintaburra drilling program is the largest continuous oil development and exploration drilling program ever undertaken in southwest Queensland, using two modern rigs drilling and casing wells about every seven days.

The Cooper Oil Project, unveiled late last year, involves using new generation small, light automated rigs drilling about 1000 small wells to target small, shallow pools of oil still in place in the mature fields of the Cooper Basin in both southwest Queensland northeast South Australia.

Santos is using its huge database to prioritise drilling in regions with potential for higher recovery rates, milking more liquids out of existing fields.

Santos believes it could get up to another 50 million barrels of oil in this way. By late August, the company had drilled 42 wells with 37 successes – an 88% strike rate.

The Tintaburra partners are Santos 89%, Drillsearch 10% and CPC Energy 1%.